The King James Conspiracy Read online

  “Does our elder colleague suggest,” Spaulding piped up, a derisive grin mouthing the words, “that this may be the work of demons?”

  “Devils may indeed enter into a man,” Chaderton intoned, his eyes steel, in the voice of God. “They make a human hand perform inhuman acts. And we may be assured that the devil himself is opposed to our work here in this hall. He has doubtless sent his minions to distract us, or, dare I say, to destroy us.”

  Several of the men in the group began praying again. One crossed himself.

  “Now, if I may be permitted,” Marbury said slowly, inching his way toward the corpse, “I see that brother Harrison has something in his mouth.”

  All eyes turned toward the body, heads leaned in; the circle around Harrison grew smaller.

  “Pardon me,” Marbury continued, stooping close to the corpse, his hand hovering inches over the mouth.

  “Do not touch it!” Lively whispered, sucking in a breath as if he had been struck in the stomach—with something of a dramatic flair, Marbury thought.

  “Just so.” Marbury’s hand flicked without warning, speed and agility blurring the movement, and retrieved a crumpled, moist bit of paper from the dead man’s mouth.

  Everyone gasped. More men crossed themselves, whispering.

  Delicately, with thumb and index finger, Marbury unwrinkled the bit of paper and held it closer to the candle. Words were written upon it, as several could see.

  “What does it say?” Lively breathed almost soundlessly.

  “‘Wandering through the world as God’s hangmen,’” Marbury read.

  He set the torn bit of paper on Harrison’s desk. The men crowded around the desk. Candles were offered to illuminate the work. All read the note.

  The words sound familiar, somehow, Marbury thought to himself.

  “This ghastly note is clearly written in Harrison’s own hand.” Lively tapped the bottom of his candle on the wrinkled, wet, torn bit of writing.

  “I agree,” Marbury asserted calmly.

  Marbury’s mind invented wild images of the murderer forcing Harrison’s mouth open, forcing him to eat his own words.

  “Is it a message?” Lively wanted to know.

  “A warning?” Spaulding asked.

  “This is the work of devils,” Chaderton asserted.

  “All the more reason,” Marbury intervened, a bit louder than before, his voice a thin tissue of tolerance stretched over a chasm of impatience, “for us to shroud ourselves in a veil of secrecy. We should now return to our rooms. Please evacuate this hall. I would speak with Mr. Lively a moment in private, if the rest of you would excuse us.”

  Several of the men moved immediately toward the door. The rest followed slightly behind. Only Chaderton looked back.

  As the last of the men closed the door, Marbury began, “Someone must investigate this monstrous event—and you know as well as I that the local watchmen are of no use.”

  “Are you suggesting that you—”

  “No,” Marbury assured Lively. “I am well aware of the political tempest that would ensue if I were the investigator. And this is to your advantage. If I were to follow the obvious line of questioning, you would be the first suspect.”

  “I?” Lively exploded.

  “You found the body. You hated Harrison—”

  “I called the alarm!” Lively snarled.

  “A perfect gesture—”

  “With the greatest respect imaginable,” Lively said with no respect at all, “your perception is clouded by the brandy you drink. Everyone says so. One smells it on your breath.”

  Marbury’s face offered an entire play, all five acts in quick succession: anger, constraint, consideration, calm, and indulgence. When he finally spoke, it was as if to a schoolboy.

  “All the more reason, then, for an independent investigator, Mr. Lively.” Marbury sighed. “And if I take a bit of brandy in the evening, it is so that I may sleep. The cares of this world evaporate in the fires of good drink, and I am delivered to my bed a calmer man. I am almost the child I was. For this I am grateful, as a good night’s sleep dulls my response to the next day’s insult. This allows me to return that insult with radiance rather than violence. In my younger days I would often stab the offender with my dagger.”

  Lively glanced at Marbury’s left sleeve; it hung lower than his right, the perfect place to conceal a short blade. He suddenly realized that antagonizing Marbury was not a sound practice.

  “So,” Lively managed, swallowing hard, “have you a man in mind for this investigation?”

  “Not exactly.” Marbury’s voice was crisp. “But as luck would have it, I know where I can find one.”

  3

  The next night, on the most disreputable street in Cambridge, Marbury hesitated before he grasped the handle of a tavern door. He was dressed head to foot in sober, crisp black. The cape was thick and past his knees; the cap was low on his forehead. He could have walked away then. He even thought for an instant that he should. He had such a strange foreboding. He felt for his dagger, well hidden in the fold of his cape. Its solid handle reassured him. Still, at the exact moment he pushed open the door, he could not have explained why he’d done it.

  Low ceiling rafters of the crowded public house made Marbury stoop as he entered. No one took notice of him. This was a place where eyes were deliberately averted, lest they be cut from the curious head.

  The walls were smeared, streaked a putrid color that had no name. The noise was nearly comic, a jagged human racket. Men in torn black tunics, boys in soiled red doublets, old drunkards in brown rags, all crowded around the long tables. Smaller planks covered with relatively clean tablecloths might host a demi-royal in ocean blue, a minor earl with a red cap, a moderately wealthy shopkeeper draped in raw silk; a tinsmith in his slate-gray apron. They all sat at tables made of long, honey-colored wooden planks; their seats were single-timber benches.

  The floor was hard-packed soil of England, covered with straw, old food, sleeping dogs. Where there was not a table, a bench, or a man, there was a column—six-by-six inches of rough wood that helped support the failing ceiling.

  Here was an ideal meeting place for the rupture of dark souls, a haven for impious plots, the rough work of devils in flesh.

  Marbury lifted his head a moment to a young woman in a gingerbread dress behind the bar. Her eyes darted to the right for only an instant: the direction of a little door in the far corner of the room. Without further interplay, she went back to her work. Marbury moved toward the door.

  He clutched the handle, took a deep breath, and pushed the door forward with a sudden jolt of energy. He could see all three men inside the little room jump. Marbury stepped inside, closing the door behind him. The relative silence of the smaller room was unnerving. Worse, the three men, lit only by a single candle, all wore masks. Their monks’ robes, black as a gun barrel, absorbed most of the candle’s light.

  “Good,” Marbury said. “You received my note. I was not certain you would be here with so little notice. This has all happened so quickly. When last we communicated, some three years ago—”

  “Shh!” the man in the middle commanded.

  “I expected to see your faces this time,” Marbury went on calmly, “as we have done business before.”

  “Sit.” The man stood. “Please refer to me as Samuel. This is Isaiah, and that one you may call Daniel.”

  Marbury permitted himself a smile, one that barely indicated his derision. Petty men revel in espionage, he thought, false names they think might be clever, and ridiculous meetings such as this one. Perhaps these men from the Anglican Church, Marbury thought, are more laughable because they long to imitate the Catholics.

  “And by which book of the Old Testament would you call me?” Marbury asked softy.

  “Be seated.” Isaiah indicated a chair. “We have agreed to assist you again only because our King’s great work is in jeopardy.”

  The chair scraped like a shovel over the hard ground
of a grave.

  “And we must be brief.” Samuel had a voice like a crow’s. “We have found a man, perfect for your needs. We have told him of the murdered translator, Harrison. He has agreed to help you.”

  Marbury took his seat and said nothing. In a den of thieves, silence is an ally. But his right hand crept slowly up his left sleeve and touched the handle of his blade.

  “The man, as it happens, is a former Catholic. By the grace of God, he converted to the Church of England some twenty years ago,” Samuel’s voice rattled.

  Marbury drew in a breath, knowing a lie was hidden in Samuel’s words. “Twenty years ago, in Queen Elizabeth’s day, a man chose between conversion and death. A convert made from fear should always be suspect.”

  “In those years,” Samuel continued, ignoring Marbury, “this man assisted Philip Sidney with his opus magnum, Arcadia. Sir Philip’s estate recommends him. At that time, however, for reasons best kept secret from you, he worked under another name. That name has vanished from all records.”

  “How can we be certain, then,” Marbury said, leaning back in his chair, “that this man—”

  “He has vanished from all records.” Without blinking behind his mask, Samuel’s lips tensed.

  “I see.” Marbury nodded once.

  “I hope you do,” Samuel rasped. “Now to complete our story. We took our man to the Sidney family for a reference. An ancient servant named Jacob, whose memory for faces has outlasted his ability to recall names, knew our man. The family found, in certain payment records, that such a man had indeed been in the employ of Sir Philip, listed only as ‘monk.’ This monk is the man we want. We can produce certain records; he possesses certain qualities—”

  “You mean to say that this man has credentials I might show to others,” Marbury said evenly, “but which are, in essence, fabricated. They are in some way true but completely untraceable. And I assume you will not tell me this monk’s real name, or anything else about him.”

  “We will not,” Samuel confirmed. “Except to say that he was imprisoned for a time in Italy, but he is not a criminal. You are a clever man. This should tell you everything.”

  “The Inquisition.” Marbury folded his hands and considered that the man he was about to hire had endured both Elizabeth’s persuasion and the tortures of the Inquisition. He would be a man of iron.

  “As you say,” Samuel pressed on, “the necessary papers have been forged, documents signed, weak men bribed. Our man will infiltrate your translators and ferret out the murderer, as you wish.”

  “Possibly, but I must have an official reason for his presence. I too, you must understand, have documents that must be kept; petty officials to placate.”

  Samuel answered without hesitation, “He is a scholar. Say that he is to be your daughter’s tutor.”

  “Anne’s tutor?” Marbury coughed. “But she is an adult of twenty years; well past tutoring.”

  “Unmarried.” Isaiah’s single-word pronouncement was made from lead. “And fancies herself a religious philosopher.”

  Marbury’s first impulse was to ask how this man might know anything about Anne, but he thought better of such a question.

  “She is her father’s child.” Marbury’s tone was not remotely apologetic. “And she will not accept a tutor.”

  “We are given to understand that she is interested in the modes of Greek learning as well as theology.” Samuel let that sink in.

  Marbury sighed. Of course these little men would know about Anne’s religious leanings. She had voiced them often enough in public.

  “She might be interested in such a thing,” Marbury acknowledged.

  “Perhaps you should insist.” Samuel did not move.

  “Does this man you have found know anything about the work of our translators?” Marbury’s voice rose.

  “Why is that important to you?” Isaiah asked, matching Marbury’s volume.

  “Anne’s interest in the translation is keen.” Marbury could not help raising his voice again. “If this man could know a bit about the work, it might help Anne to accept him more readily.”

  “He knows what any thoughtful person in his position might,” Isaiah snapped. “King James has assembled a team of some fifty-four scholars. Eight of them reside with you in Cambridge.”

  “Only seven now,” Marbury reminded Isaiah.

  “The point is,” Samuel went on, more irritated, “that they are translating the Bible from original sources. Our man’s knowledge of Greek is what recommends him with regard to this translation as well as to your daughter. As many of the original texts are in Greek—”

  “A little knowledge,” Marbury interrupted, hoping to curtail further argument and quit the room as quickly as possible, “will fool neither our Cambridge men nor convince Anne—”

  “He is a superior scholar!” Isaiah exploded. “He need fool no one.”

  Marbury could hear the menace in the man’s words. He fought an impulse to escalate the argument, realizing that he must be careful with these men. Best to go along with their plans, but to be wary of trusting them completely. He formed, then dismissed, several questions before deciding on the most basic ones.

  “How, then, shall I meet him?” Marbury leaned forward, ready to leave.

  “He will arrive tomorrow morning and report himself to you at the Deaconage.”

  Samuel moved a sheaf of papers, tied with butcher twine, toward Marbury.

  “By what name shall I call this man?”

  “He is Brother Timon.” Samuel’s voice seemed momentarily hoarse.

  Marbury noticed that the man referred to as Daniel—who had not spoken—shivered for a moment

  “Who named him that?” Marbury wanted to know, failing to keep a fraction of amusement from his words.

  The three men looked at one another, obviously without an answer to his question.

  “I only ask because I find the name interesting. It is, you see, from a play I know. It is the name of a character who hates all men—hates them because they have been ungrateful for his good deeds.”

  The three men remained silent.

  “Very well.” Marbury stood up and pulled his cloak around him, feeling for the handle of his hidden dagger. “Timon it is. I look forward to meeting him.”

  Without another syllable, Marbury moved to the door, not quite turning his back to the three shadows. His ears were tuned to the slightest hint of movement from them as he slipped through the door.

  WHEN HE WAS CERTAIN that Marbury was gone, Samuel slumped in his chair. Isaiah blew out a long breath.

  The one called Daniel was the first to remove his mask. He mopped his face with it, and his hand shook as he did. “Thank God this business is done and soon I can return to Rome.”

  “Well, only . . . at least for the moment.” Samuel glanced to Isaiah, mask still in place.

  “Our brother Cardinal Venitelli does not have the stomach for back rooms and shadows,” Isaiah sighed.

  “Look how I am soaked in sweat, and yet what a cold place England is.” Cardinal Venitelli tossed his dampened mask to the table. “You do not need to call me Daniel now?”

  “I do not,” Isaiah grunted. “We are alone.”

  “Of course.” Venitelli shivered and crossed himself absently, holding his arms close to his chest. “I must tell you both that I am sorry for this Marbury. Sorry. He seems, from all I have discovered about him, an intelligent man. How have you been able to fool him for so long?”

  “He is a Protestant,” Samuel spat dismissively.

  “He trusts us, and why shouldn’t he? We have cultured his confidence for several years for our current purposes. He was our instrument, unwittingly, in destroying the Bye Plot against James.”

  “Was he?” Venitelli asked, shivering again. “I thought that our own Father Henry Garnet—”

  “Our Pope wanted James to condemn all Catholics,” Isaiah hissed. “Nothing solidifies us half so much, He feels, as opposition.”

  Veni
telli struggled to understand. “His Holiness did not want James to repeal the anti-Catholic legislation?”

  “Marbury is as much our instrument, though he does not know it, as is this so-called Brother Timon,” Samuel sneered.

  Venitelli closed his eyes at the mention of that name. “Timon,” Venitelli repeated tensely, staring at the door through which Marbury had vanished. “What are we doing? We have handed this decent man Marbury over to a demon.”

  4

  In an alley off another street in Cambridge, at that exact moment, a silver blade caught the moon’s light. Then it pierced an old man’s heart.

  The dagger had skillfully been inserted just below the breastbone and thrust upward. The old man, whose name was Jacob, stared into the eyes of his murderer, an impossibly tall, obsidian shadow who seemed to reflect darkness. A black robe and hood made him nearly invisible in the night.

  “Let me explain what is happening,” the murderer whispered calmly. “I have slid my knife past your thin, thin skin and into your beating heart. Now, you could not feel the edge moving, but I have sliced your heart almost exactly in half. The wound in your chest is so clean that little blood will escape there, but your heart will keep pumping for a moment or two more, filling up your chest cavity with enough blood, at least in theory, to make your torso actually explode. Have no fear. You will be dead by the time it happens. But it will make identifying your body very difficult.”

  The monk’s hood fell back, revealing a face that radiated cold brilliance. The eyes were the color of young green leaves, the curled hair was black and gray, tousled wildly about his head. His features seemed carved more than grown.

  “I knew you—years ago—Giordano!” Jacob managed to say.

  “Yes,” the murderer answered soothingly. “That is why I have killed you: I must no longer be Giordano. I must vanish from all records, and you are a living record of my existence. From now on I shall be called Timon, you see.”

  Jacob struggled to speak more.

  “Never fear,” Timon interrupted. “You have given God and your masters in the Sidney family a good life of service. Your soul is crouched low now—I can feel it—waiting to leap into heaven. There it will find eternal delight. You were a good man.”